It is obvious to us that Evolutionism-Darwinism is an anti-Christian atheistic dogma masquerading as science. According to renown (sic) philosopher of science, Professor Michael Ruse blah blah blah blah.

We therefore urge you to persuade President Trump to issue an executive order imposing a nationwide indefinite moratorium on the teaching of evolution in public schools. For it to be effective, this order should clearly state that it supersedes the decisions of state and district boards of education regarding the science curriculum. Those schools that don’t comply with it should be completely denied federal funding and aid by the Department of Education, just as it is proposed that cities that provide sanctuary to illegal aliens ought to be denied assistance. We hope that you will act upon this very urgent matter and uphold truth and the American way of life we hold so dear.

(Yeah, one peep out of you freedom-hating bastards and we’ll jerk your funding so fast your head will spin! But hey, no pressure. We’re all about that “equal exposure and then letting the kids decide for themselves.”)

Yes, I’m joking about the game of Clue, and what looks like the murder of America.

I suppose I should feel worse, but … I already think civilization is coming to an end. I thought it would be in about 2030, but it looks like things are speeding up. One wonders if those women who ask the police for protection from abusive husbands feel one small moment of satisfaction — “See? I TOLD them he’d come here and kill me!” — in their last terrified minutes.

I’ve already seen people blaming this on Hillary, but I don’t. Hillary was a fantastic candidate suffering from too many lies and smears. She was America’s pit bull puppy, languishing in the animal shelter not for anything she’d done, but because of idiot public perception.

Thank you, Mrs. Clinton, for taking this on. I’m sorry WE let YOU down, and I wish you all the best in the future. Ditto to President Obama and his family in the coming years.

The real blame lies on those people who voted for Donald Trump. Not Hillary, not Democrats, not anything or anybody else. (And I kinda don’t even blame them. They’re reacting pretty much as I expect.)

With two small exceptions.

Bear in mind that I voted for Ralph Nader back in 2000. I defended that choice for years, but I finally realized I — and a lot of people like me — really had handed the White House to that little weasel George W. Bush — whom I have described as “a 110-volt man in a 220-volt office,” and “just about bright enough to run a tire store.” (I don’t think even that highly of Trump.)

But to all those people who voted for Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, yes, thank you for adding the phrase “President Donald Trump” to the national dialogue. Donald is YOUR president, YOUR accomplishment, and I hope you’ll be happy with what you’ve done.

And the news media. You failed us, you miserable bastards. You can’t ever get back the respect and trust you threw away, and oh-my-god, now what?

With Donald in the White House, and a GOP-controlled Congress, we can look for a lot more fracking and fracking side-effects. No action on climate change. The final victory of corporatism over democracy. The faster and further loss of esteem from the rest of the world. An end to public lands, and science education.

A conservative Supreme Court will mean saying bye-bye to same-sex marriage, to women’s reproductive rights, to ObamaCare and maybe even Social Security and Medicare. Not to mention an end to separation of church and state, and probably all pretense of democracy. —But at least we’ll all have plenty of guns, right?

I’m expecting a slow-rolling wave of shock over the next four years, as Trump voters — some of them, not all — realize what they’ve done, and what it’s doing to us. Right now, they must be celebrating big-time (I’m already seeing some crowing from the Jesusians), and I wish them the best during this brief moment of victory.

OWN this moment, Trumpsters. But also own everything that comes after. I don’t think it’s going to be anything like what you wanted, but you bought it. Now you get to unwrap this bitch and try to figure out where the batteries go and how the thing works.

Elsewhere: I’m imagining a great deal of fear right now in the LBGT community, among American Muslims, possibly among Latinos, and probably even among seniors.

To the limits of my poor ability, I’ve got your back. We all have a common enemy — not Trump, but the stupidity behind him, the willful ignorance that made him president — and I like to think we’ll face it together.

( BTW: According to Wikipedia, “A shofar is an ancient musical horn made of ram’s horn, used for Jewish religious purposes.” —Hey, if I want some musical instrument played in The Nation’s Capital, I want a CHRISTIAN instrument, possibly a pedal steel guitar borrowed from a smoke-and-beer-smelling honky tonk, or a red-white-and-blue banjo made from the casing of an unexploded artillery shell. Not some nancy Jewish instrument made from a ram’s horn that nobody even knows how to play a tune on. /snark )

The event itself is this:

Nov. 6, 7 and 8—three nights leading up to the most important presidential election since the Civil War, concerned citizens will be gathering at the Upper Senate Park across Constitution Avenue from the U.S. Capitol to pray for the election and the nation’s future.

The rationale for the event is this:

The organizers believe that prayer, not politics, is the only hope and answer to America’s problems. “Where people are praying, there is hope. When people pray things happen,” says Pastor Dan Cummins, an associate pastor of Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, California, and the onsite pastor of The Jefferson Gathering Worship Services which are held weekly in the nation’s Capitol building for members of Congress, staff and all federal employees.

There’s the 180-degrees thing.”When people pray things happen.” From seeing to the medical needs of children to having some real effect on the larger world through hands-on action, this is the exact opposite of the truth.

But, hey:

“Skyline Church is involved because we understand that America is in a crisis moment. The nation—as we know it—is gasping for air. This is neither melodramatic nor defeatist. It is simply fact,” says Dr. Jim Garlow, senior pastor of Skyline Church in San Diego and oversite pastor of the Jefferson Gathering. “The kingdom of God will be fine—with or without America. But America may not survive. We pray for voters to enter the voting booth with a healthy reverence of God, casting a ballot for biblical concepts and principles.”

Wait, that wasn’t a shofar. Sounded more like a conservative dog whistle.

Though the event is advertised as “non-partisan” the focus of its prayers will be for the nation and the election. Organizers believe that it was upon the influence of Judeo-Christian ethics that America was founded. They hope that this election will be influential in bringing the nation back to its core values.

Let’s see. Careful denial of partisanship. But then “bringing the nation back to its core values.” Yeah, that does sound dog-whistley. And ooh, there’s that clever mention of “the most important presidential election since the Civil War.” And sure, I guess we have gotten far away from those “core values,” what with this NEGRO in office, and this WOMAN poised to continue his anti-American policies.

“There is a steady undercurrent of targeted efforts to remove God from every vestige of American life and culture. These battles confirm a tangible reality that the things we hold sacred are slowly eroding away all around us,” says Lea Carawan, president and executive director of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation. “Thankfully, God’s people are unifying with one heart and one voice in prayer for the country and those who lead her. God has been and always will be our only source of hope.”

The focus of evening prayers will span from the White House to every house in America. The Supreme Court nominees and the judicial system will be a center of focus.

1) Nobody is “rigging” an election. If that were possible, don’t you think the Democrats would CONTROL Congress? (Also, “the fix” is not in for the Clintons. If the fix was in, they never would have impeached Bill Clinton.)

2) The FBI is not “reopening an investigation into Clinton.” The messages were neither sent by nor received by Clinton, did not appear on any computers used by Clinton, did not involve Clinton, and contained no classified info

About every 3 days during this election cycle, a new “story” has appeared, trumpeting >>> THIS IS IT!!! THE SMOKING GUN THAT WILL BRING HILLARY CLINTON DOWN!!!! <<<

… and NOT ONE of those stories has turned out to be anything other than smears and innuendo. Hateful lies.

Listen carefully: The GOP hates Hillary Clinton with a blinding passion. During the 25 or so years they’ve been after her, they have controlled the Senate, the House, the White House or all three for some substantial portion of the time. She’s been accused of everything from murder to selling off American parks to the Russians.

IF IF IF there was anything they could have nailed her on — hell, jaywalking, a simple parking ticket — SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN INDICTED.

The fact that she hasn’t even been charged with anything in all those years, with all those breathless stories about her supposed crimes, is just about rock-solid proof that there have been precisely zero illegal acts.

You’re letting people lie to you — over and over and OVER. Doesn’t that bother you?

Hillary Clinton is going to be our next president. She’s going to beat Donald Trump by a wide margin BECAUSE MORE AMERICANS ARE GOING TO VOTE FOR HER.

Including me. I will be so glad when this election is over and Hillary Clinton is president.

The replies were … typical. Here’s one, by the woman who posted the pic:

LOL was the only response I could muster knowing that when you’re that far gone, there’s no helping you anyway.. But I still find a bit of humor in it.

1. I think he’s a troll.

2. “he” might not even be a he.

3. Only a Hillary supporter has enough time in a working man’s day to write a big long essay like that… On Facebook… On someone’s Facebook who they don’t even know or are friends with. I guess he’s trying to get her in office so his welfare check doesn’t get cut off.

4. I’m not stating my political stance either way, and I’m not here for a debate. I simply found a bit of humor here and decided to share it..So, my most serious question… What kind of person takes a meme so.. seriously!

I wrote a reply:

First, regarding the “big long essay”: I’m a professional writer and editor, and this “big long essay” took very little time.

Second, regarding writing during a “working man’s day”: This was on a Saturday, my day off. I worked on my house, climbing under it and repairing some insulation. I also installed a towel rack in the bathroom and did laundry. Went out to eat. And still had time to write this “big long essay.”

Third, my “welfare check”: I’m 64 years old and have been working — often in blue collar jobs — since I was about 16. Still waiting on that big, sweet welfare check.

Next, that big long essay “on someone’s Facebook who they don’t even know or are friends with.” Besides the fact that it showed up on my own Facebook wall, making it fair game for a reply … lies are lies, and you have to fight them wherever you find them. Otherwise you and everybody you know will have to live in the world they create.

Finally, I don’t get the bit about me being a troll, or “he might not even be a he.” That’s some serious Way Out Of Left Field shit.

A bit later, I added,

Take note that my reply contained facts and solid political analysis, but that all the responses contained nothing but personal attacks. Not one of you made any attempt to refute my reply. Instead you went straight for the insults. Which sort of implies you’re not able to argue with any of it, right?

I came back later to see if there were any replies. My reply had been deleted. I wrote:

I live only a 2.5-hour drive from New York City. When 9/11 happened, I was working for the local newspaper, and we stayed up half the night putting together the 9/12 newspaper, covering all the known details of the event. I still have a copy of that next day’s newspaper as one of my prized personal mementos.

There was a surge of locals rushing to New York immediately after the event. To assist with the rescue work. To make sure friends and relatives were okay. To just go and look at the site.

But I stayed away. One, there was nothing useful I could do, and Two, you just DON’T go playing disaster-tourist in cases like this, getting in the way of all the different kinds of professionals trying to deal with the thing.

There was another reason, though, and this is yet another element of my lasting anger over the whole thing. I knew for a fact that the air was poisonously bad. You don’t just smash and burn a couple of jet airplanes, with all their fuel and passengers, and two huge skyscrapers full of construction materials and plastics and paints and chemicals and PEOPLE, and then have good safe air to breathe. I stayed away because the air was sure to be toxic as hell. That fact had to be obvious to anybody who thought about it for two seconds.

The smoldering site “acted as a chemical factory,” atmospheric scientist Thomas Cahill told the American Chemical Society in 2003. And the mix of chemicals and building materials — including asbestos, glass and steel — have been linked to diseases and conditions such as cancer and a “World Trade Center cough.”

Yet Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey and Bush-appointed head of the Environmental Protection Agency at the time, lied her ass off just days later (with the full knowledge of, and probably on orders from, the Bush White House), telling New Yorkers:

I am glad to reassure the people of New York … that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink.

You want to be angry at Government? Be angry at someone like that, who took a situation where people should have been warned, and did nothing, dooming thousands of children, rescue workers and ordinary New Yorkers to early deaths from cancer, emphysema, COPD, or to a lifetime of suffering, for no good reason. No, she didn’t cause 9/11, but she sure failed to protect Americans after it. (People, Hillary’s emails and Benghazi and all the other crap being dreamed up about her, don’t even come CLOSE to all that happened during 9/11.)

But here’s Hillary Clinton — you know, that evil witch we all love to hate? — who was a New York Senator at the time, reacting with real anger over that lie:

Maybe in the immediate aftermath, the first couple of days, nobody could know. But a week later? Two weeks later? Two months later? Six months later? Give me a break! They knew and they didn’t tell us the truth.

I will always remember 9-11 as the failure of George W. Bush to keep America safe. The loss of the Twin Towers, an iconic American landmark, and the lives of almost 3,000 people, the worst attack on American soil in history, greater even than Pearl Harbor, is on HIM.

That this little weasel (forgive me, weasels) will live out his life rich and safe and free from censure or responsibility is just one more part of the tragedy.

A constant for those of us on the left is our “rage against the machine” vibe. When it comes to the power of government or the rights of the individual, we’re totally tuned in to those individual rights.

When a story floats across our attention about a kid sent home from school for wearing “inappropriate clothing” — a provocative blouse, for instance, or a t-shirt with a comically dirty picture on it — we’re right there swinging, often screaming that the teacher should be fired, or the principal should be fired, for assaulting the fragile psyche of each of these embattled children.

Yet it’s rare for me to leap to spitting hate at teachers and school administrators when I hear these stories. For one thing, I feel strongly that the purpose of school is education, and everything else should come second. The deal is: You come to school and pay attention and we’ll hand you the keys to life. But the deal is also: You’re required to act in such a way that you don’t distract the other kids trying to absorb those keys, and don’t make it harder for the teachers — who already have a damned difficult job — trying to impart them.

You have a RIGHT to education. But you have a DUTY to not interfere with others’ enjoyment of that right.

Too often, it seems to me, in our avid clamor for our rights in society, we miss the point that we also have these attached duties. We on the left forget that waaaay too often. We scream and leap rather than take a moment to think, deeply and thoroughly, about each issue as it arises.

One of the hazards of that sort of reaction is that we’re easily manipulated. On issue after issue, our knee-jerk scream reaction makes us easy marks for clever opponents. I watched this happen when I was a political activist: Developers in my small town would present this plan for a vast, elaborate development with all sorts of environment-destroying bells and whistles. We would predictably scream and leap, writing letters to the paper, speaking up angrily in city council meetings, drawing up petitions for people to sign. And the developer would back down! But he would back down to his real, original plan, which was to build condos in a delicate meadow and major viewshed area of the town.

If he’d proposed that real plan in the beginning, we would have worked against that, and maybe blocked the development entirely. But because he tossed out the equivalent of radar-foiling chaff, we saw only the chaff and missed the bombers coming through. At the end, we sighed with pride at our efforts. Sure the condos got built in that delicate meadow but, by god, we stopped him from building the touristy blacksmith shop along that one delicate creek.

I saw it time after time, enough to finally realize that the developers KNEW US. They knew what we’d do. We’d go for the red cape — EVERY TIME — and miss the fact that there was a bullfighter behind it with a killing sword.

I came to understand there was something like a bull session where the developer would get his whole crew in and say “Okay, kids, here’s the plan. Now let’s add on some bait for the idiots, stuff we know they’ll hate, so they can fight that while we get the main project approved. Come on, what can we put in here? Let’s have some ideas, the goofier the better!”

We won and won and won the small battles, but lost and lost and lost the big ones.

We on the left are suckers for an obvious pitch. Time after time, we’ll leap for the shiny lure and miss the fact that there’s a fisherman on the other end of the line.

So: France.

They’ve been catching holy hell for the recent ban on burkinis on some French beaches, which was even more recently overturned. The online community practically burned up the Internet with outrage at that hideous transgression onto individual liberty and the misogynistic assault on women. FRENCH POLICE FORCE WOMAN TO REMOVE BURKINI!!!

Meanwhile, over in that bastion of women’s rights (and Islam), Saudi Arabia, women are forbidden to drive cars, or try on clothing in stores. Forbidden to wear body-defining clothing or makeup that “enhances beauty.” Forbidden to open a bank account without their husband’s permission. Forbidden to go for a swim, compete in sports, or interact with men while out and about. FORBIDDEN TO APPEAR IN PUBLIC WITHOUT A MALE ESCORT.

So you’d expect an equal or greater amount of outrage over all that, right? I mean, considering the horrified reaction with France? Because, hey, talk about assaults on individual liberty and pure-dee misogyny!

I mean, dayyum — Saudi women LIVE UNDER HOUSE ARREST for their entire lives. Just because they’re women.

Our reaction? … Crickets.

To be fair, I’ve seen plenty of stories in the atheist community about Islam-the-religion. We oppose it as avidly as we oppose Christianity. But when it comes to Islamic culture, which contains Islam-the-religion as an inseparable foundational element, we seem fairly blind to it. Too many of us have even adopted the word “Islamophobia” — which seems to be defined as “blind hatred for poor, innocent Muslims” — and used it to flail at everyone in sight, passionately defending both Muslims and Islam with the same cannonade.

Something we’re almost not permitted to say on the Left is that some cultures are superior to others. Considering its treatment and subjugation of women, I consider Islam — as practiced in predominantly Islamic countries — to be an inferior culture. Anyplace that forces women to walk around in burkhas, to cover themselves head to foot, aside from anything else, that’s UGLY. Any country or culture that confines women (hell, anybody!) to their homes — with the right to leave dependent on having a MAN, and only a close relative at that — is a culture that should not qualify as even minimally acceptable to the modern world.

Yes, I’m sure there are plenty of women there who are happy with their burkhas (cough*StockholmSyndrome*cough), who would defend to the death the wearing of the burkha. But in my view, some things are an offense against freedom and equality themselves, against womanhood itself. The burkha is one of those things.

In France, it’s currently estimated that 5 to 10 percent of French residents are now Muslims, with a full 25 percent of French teens being Islamic. The Muslim population is growing, and most French citizens can clearly see the coming radical demographic and cultural shift.

If you focus only on the rights of poor, embattled women to wear burkinis on the beach, you’d have to conclude the French are horrible and hateful and even racist. The idea! Sending armed thugs to force a poor little woman to remove her burkini! My god, what is the world coming to?

But if you see the bigger picture of an invasive — and inferior — culture using such controversies as manipulative bait to win more and more of the cultural ground, things look a bit different.

In that bigger picture, France is trying to preserve French culture.

Do they have that right? I mean, if it means this poor, poor woman has to face public humiliation?

I have to say they do. Hell, I think they have the DUTY to push back with everything they’ve got.

Not because they want to hurt this one innocent woman, but because they want to protect the rights of ALL French women, the freedom of ALL women to move confidently and freely through the cities and towns of France, indefinitely into the future, against a real trend toward Islamic majority that would — will! — diminish those rights and freedoms.

The lure to gain our knee-jerk reaction of sympathy and support is the picture of this one poor woman. Thanks to us, Islam wins another public relations battle.

But meanwhile, something hidden, something bigger, goes on.

—————————————-

Postscript 1: Oh, that brutal murder of the Charlie Hebdo staff by an Islamist? No, no, that was one lone individual. A total aberration. Islam is the Religion of Peace™.

Postscript 2: Aside from individual rights, the Koran is pretty clear that alcohol is satanic. What happens to the French wine industry — third largest in the world — when Islam becomes the dominant culture? Hey, probably they’ll just switch over to Prophet Muhammad Wine, right? Riiiight.

I’d like to select out a pithy quote from it, but the whole damned article is so good, so obviously true, it’s hard to decide on the best excerpt. So here’s a big chunk of it, with some of my own bolding to emphasize more shocking parts:

Somehow, enragingly, it is acceptable for panelists of talking heads to discuss her voice, her laugh, whether she smiles enough. To admonish her for “shouting.” To talk about her hair, her clothes, her accessories. To sneer at her jokes and disdainfully disqualify any personal tidbit she shares as “pandering” and “cynical” and a desperate, pathetic attempt to connect to voters.

To openly laugh at anything she does that reveals her humanity.

This is not news coverage. This is harassment. This is rank dehumanization. This is abuse.

How have we gotten to a point where we tolerate this deeply sexist, deeply personal sustained attack on one of the most admired women in the world?

How have we allowed ourselves to become so inured to a public, ritualistic humiliation of one of our nation’s most admired public servants?

Why do we expect that this overpoweringly unhealthy dynamic should be the cost of her public service, when no man in her position – including her disgusting opponent – is subjected to anything like this level of harassment and dehumanization?

Could any other human being survive this level of aggressive, ceaseless auditing, judgment, scrutiny, and personal criticism?

Why are the media doing this to her? And why are we allowing it to happen?

Hillary is the only person in public service at this level for whom unbridled contempt is not merely acceptable, but encouraged.

There is an elite Beltway media club, dominated by conservative-leaning white men, and every reporter on the political beat wants to belong to the club – a club whose gatekeepers have set as a requirement for entry the willingness to abandon all pretense of objectivity toward Hillary.

More:

The theme that runs throughout her career in public service that she is dishonest, corrupt, compromised is accompanied by a parallel theme of exoneration. She is investigated; she is found to have done nothing wrong. She is accused; the accusations are found to be without merit. She is battered by insinuations that are, upon objective scrutiny, found to be unjustifiable.

But they are endlessly repeated nonetheless, in order to create enough smoke that some voters reflexively assume there must be a fire.

But there is no fire. There is only a smoke machine.

And still more:

I refuse to abide in silence this toxic dynamic of a culture that treats as normal the ritualistic shaming and abuse of the woman who could be our first woman president.

I have some fairly conservative friends out west. And when I say “friends,” I’m not kidding, or speaking in the Facebook sense. I mean people I love, good people, people I want to have in my life forever.

But THEY have friends, and those friends have friends, on and on outward on Facebook Planet, and I occasionally see posts my own friends liked or commented on, that are — let’s say — non-contiguous to me on the Venn Diagram of socio-political views.

So here’s this shooting in Dallas — Five cops dead, others wounded, Black Lives Matter in the mix, all manner of anger and righteousness and conservative vs. liberals swirling around.

And I see this:

Not even gonna comment on it, but the reactions to it were … interesting. These are all verbatim, typos and all:

—————————–

Jesse Ross: hmmmm , just in time to take the heat off of Hillary .Be very skeptical of what the media is putting out right now , just like the last shooting at the gay night club , it was busted as a false flag , it was part of the summer chaos crisis acting to push the Gun control issue , and the actors were found out , that is why you no longer hear it in the news. they are running out of time to get their agenda in place..if it is true , I feel bad , but I no longer trust the things we are being told by the media.

Jesse Ross: and while this kept everyone watching the right hand , the left hand signs EXECUTIVE ORDER To Take Over America yesterday…don’t believe me ..google it.

Marta Verissimo: Where is he? Busy preparing a speech that will further inflame and divide America. What does he think he’s going to accomplish by calling America racist every time he gets a chance? Violence that’s what. And no he will not blame guns. He will now blame us Americans for being racist. Again serving his political agenda. Wake the hell up people!

Mary Lessigne: All those strategy sessions with Obama & BLM leaders at the White House finally paid off for him

James Randolph: Obama has destroyed this country. Racism was never as bad as it is know. And all you will get out of Obama and his administration and the Democrats is more gun control. Worst President ever.

Ricardo Brown: All presidents since Kennedy have been puppets of zionism. Obama is no better or worse. He’s just folliwing orders.

Janice Wagoner: Our race bating president is glad this happened, it got the news media talking about something other than the turncoat FBI director who gave a total pardon to Obama’s hopeful replacement, Hillary.

Lee Veatch: Our p.o.s. president doesn’t give a damn about cops dying. That’s just 5 less enemy soldiers his army has to fight when his war starts.

Alan Kinsman: All part of Obama’s agenda. There is much more to this story than we will ever know.

Ricardo Brown: It’s not obama’s agenda, he’s just following orders. All presidents since Kennedy have been Zionist puppets. Kennedy’s assassination was a warning to future presidents.

Paula Griffin: Our president is a Muslim and a black terrorist that’s why he supports all this violence

Sandy Otto: What, no comment yet, what a surprise. Where is he and the family on vacation now?

Bill Sitter: Out of the country like he always is when this stuff happens.!!!!!!

Susan Day-Schisler: In Polland, is it strange to anyone else that he’s almost always out of country when disasters hit OUR COUNTRY?

Matt Duc: Bull shit post last night was flase flage u cant buy that caliber sniper rilfe legally if they pull anoth gun control law shit ima laugh cause the only way to buy guns like that are black market or deepweb for alot of bitcoins and yes this shit is real problem these people are not using the guns we as citizens use to protect our selfs these weapons that these criminals get are alot more powerful on par with guns our own amry has i used to no people that had fully atomic rilfes and im not talking ar 15 im talking shit like ak 74s and up shit thats banned and these people have no trouble geting more either i think our country would suffer more if we outlawed guns for citizens to protect them selves with

Dianne Johnson: That bastard is sitting in the White House laughing!!!!!

Emanuel Oshana: Scumbag is too busy dividing this country . He’s got plans for all of us come this election, does anyone else hear Martial law coming ?? We need to clear this trash out of the White house and take our country back . All these shootings one after another are all red flags

Daniel Ohls: Probably chilling with his ISIS buddies.

David Cobb: He is talking the same BS about Gun Control, when are these Idiots realize thugs and criminals don’t care about Gun Control other than taking guns away from law abiding citizens. They, these thugs and criminals will get guns no matter what, the Obama Administration has provided guns to drug Cartels and Terrorist, but they want to disarm Americans who obey the law. Liberals are idiots.

Vickie Hibbard: He staged it so he can take our guns

John Mccann: He is one of the black lives that doesn’t matter

David G. Patterson: LISTEN Folks!!!! Too much talk and not enough decisive action. Just like obama being president for two terms…….it was becouase the powers to be wanted it to be. It had nothing to do with your vote, black vote or electoral vote. It is all due the the corrupt, greedy, selfish, none patriotic assholes that just continue to get richer at our expense and do nothing for our Nation. It’s all about them and to hell with us and our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Now………….LISTEN……we can talk, bitch, complain, post etc all we want. Someone has to get to the actual ROOT OF THE PROBLEM or we are in laymen terms “FUCKED”!!!!!

Don Hanson: HE IS BUSY PRAYING FOR MORE DEAD AS LONG AS THEY ARE NOT MUZZIES BUT IF THEY ARE THEN HEW WILL DENY THEY ARE ISIS OR RADICALS.

Paul Showalter: THE FULL BLAME IS ON THE WHITE HOUSE TERRORIST, AS THIS IS WHAT HE HAS BEEN WORKING ON FOR TWO TERMS. NOTHING SUCH AS THIS EVER TRANSPIRED BEFORE HIS PRESIDENCY. THIS IS WHAT HE HAS LEFT AMERICA WITH.

For some years now, I’ve watched this thing happening out in full public view, wave after wave of attacks on Hillary Clinton. I figured out eventually that there was something deliberate behind it. I didn’t know who, exactly, was doing it, but I had no doubt there was some one person or conservative group operating a coordinated campaign to — metaphorically — assassinate her.

There were no solid claims to wrongdoing, it was more of a whisper campaign. Accusation after accusation, most of them baseless. But it never stopped, never let up.

And I saw the effects. People I knew very well — even Democrats! — were repeating that Hillary was untrustworthy, deceitful, slick, calculating, over-ambitious, cold. Facts supporting those evaluations were thin on the ground, but it didn’t really seem to matter. Once you believed the STORY, you could link her to ANYTHING. Benghazi, emails, selling U.S. uranium to the Russians, murder, laughing about getting a rapist off. No claim was too absurd, no link too remote. She was Killary, Shrillery, Hitlery. The vicious bitch she was, that was something people just KNEW.

Except *I* didn’t know it. For a while I kept digging for the factual grounding on each new claim, but once I figured out the facts didn’t matter, that the thing wasn’t really even about facts, I flipped around and automatically discounted every new claim and story UNLESS there was some sound corroborative evidence. Which there never was.

The whole thing was like … well, like the girl you might have known in junior high school that everybody said was a stinking slut, but you knew her personally and knew she wasn’t anything like that. But you couldn’t get anyone to actually listen to you, because the very act of defending her made YOU smell bad.

My view of Hillary Clinton is based on quite a number of things, but ONE of those things is the fact that this vicious whisper campaign exists. The second I notice a multi-million-dollar ad campaign, that’s the second I start to trust the product less. The product of “Hillary Clinton — Cold, Calculating, Murderous Bitch” is just not something I’m willing to buy.

In the deepest part of me, I know I can’t trust a product sold through lies and emotional manipulation. If you’re manipulating people with flummery and falsehood, if you’re trying to manipulate ME with fear and rage and paranoia, you are SO not someone I want to listen to.

One last thing I’ve said many times:

Fact 1: The GOP hates Hillary Clinton with a blinding passion.

Fact 2: In the years Hillary has been in the crosshairs, the GOP has controlled the White House or Congress or BOTH for some large fraction of that time.

Fact 3: IF IF IF Hillary had done something illegal — even arguably illegal — she would have been arrested and indicted so fast it would make the Roadrunner’s head spin. Even if the charges were flimsy, she WOULD HAVE BEEN charged. And we all know it.

Fact 4: If she hasn’t been charged with something, with anything, it’s not because the fix is in. Read Fact 2 again — the GOP would have pounced on her like a pit bull on a Christmas ham. —It’s because THERE’S NOTHING THERE.

That goes for all the non-criminal accusations. You think she got those four men killed in Benghazi? Well, you’re wrong, for many reasons. You think she conveyed classified information via email? Wrong again. You think she laughed when she got a rapist off early in her legal career? No. Sold uranium to the Russians? Uh-uh. Had her license to practice law taken away? Nope.

What she is, is this: She’s a woman who’s just about to break through the highest glass ceiling. A lot of people don’t like that, not for any reason of fact, but because she’s a woman who’s just about to break through the highest glass ceiling.

But I happen to like that.

I like it quite a lot.

The fact that she’s qualified, WAY qualified, that doesn’t hurt either.

I’m not voting for her because she’s less horrible than Donald Trump. I’m voting for her because she’s good all on her own.

There was a shooting in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, last night. Described as the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, the 3-hour-long incident left 50 people dead, more than that hospitalized.

The shooter has been identified as Omar Saddiqui Mateen.

Interesting thing in the tone of most of the early articles I read on the incident: People were LEAPING to declare the shooting had absolutely no connection to Islam, the Religion of Peace™. The fact that some of us were frantic to absolve Islam, even before the facts were known, is telling.

My initial cynical estimation was that we’d come out of all this even more firmly convinced as a nation that Islam is this fluffy, friendly personal philosophy totally compatible with American values and lifestyle, and which can in no way encourage or promote violence.

But let’s call a spade a spade, okay? We atheists are free at talking about the societal dangers of Christianity. Let’s be equally free at admitting that Islam is AT LEAST that dangerous.

The gunman, identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, made a 911 call before the attack identifying himself and declared allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, according to U.S. law enforcement officials who asked not to be identified to discuss the ongoing investigation. Mateen, whose family is from Afghanistan, also cited the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon during that call.

For myself, I view Islam as a threat to civilization itself. It poses a clear and present danger to human safety, freedom and dignity. I cannot see anything graceful or good in it.

According to TheReligionofPeace.com, so far in 2016, there have been 1,035 Islamic attacks in 48 countries, in which 9,776 people were killed and 11,920 injured.

In 2015, there were 2,865 Islamic attacks in 53 countries, in which 27,626 people were killed and 26,149 injured.

Yeah, let’s all be generous, compassionate liberals, and understand that most Muslims no more want these things to happen than we do. Let’s also realize there are a number of issues involved, among them 1) continuing irrational hatred of gays and 2) too-easy access to automatic weapons.

But let’s not kid ourselves about this other issue — in this case, in the shooter’s own words, the central issue — Islam.